You're Too Old to Hunker Down and Wait This Out. Live Your Life NOW
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
It isn’t just that I love the above (I WAS a free range child, now a free-range adult), it’s the whole point
Just outside the hostal door, early morning Cuenca traffic rushes by. Here inside the building it’s cold; it’s always cold in rainy season.
Every morning I am down here with my computer at 7:30, having been up since 3:30 or 4 am, working. The Ecuadorian coffee is hot and rich. Let me rub it in here: every single day I have eggs and cheese for breakfast.
Eat your heart out, America. I know how much a dozen costs back there. Here… well. I’m enjoying them while I can. I have another week or so, and back to reality and high egg prices.
That’s precisely the point. Enjoying what we can, while we can.
Right now I live my life on Whatsapp, which is the primary mode of communication here. As a result I’ve been able to continue to talk with my dear friend Melissa every day.
I’m on Eastern Standard Time, she’s on Mountain.
Melissa is a subject matter expert with the GSA in Denver, the second-largest Federal presence in the US. She just went back to work there two years ago. She was much-needed; her expertise in the area of moving huge offices to new locations made her invaluable.
She’s female, older, and gay.
The Trump Administration doesn’t want her around. In fact, they apparently don’t want much of anyone out in Denver around, as the buildings (including brand-new critical research labs) at the Federal Center are suddenly up for sale.
I don’t need to tell you the shape she’s been in for the past several weeks. She’s a dedicated, very hard-working person, who gives everything she’s got to her commitments.
Being told that she’s no longer valuable, well. Having it publicly insinuated that she spends her days at home effectively eating bon bons and watching the soaps, well.
After moves that she manages, spending up to ten hours a day, she collapses from the physical demand. Sure. Lazy.
You can understand why she and her office mates find some of the snark coming out of the White House highly offensive. She lives to serve, as do many civil service.
The incivility of much of what’s going is beyond the pale, which is part of Melissa’s world right now.
The GSA had sought her out. Now Musk wants everyone out, apparently including nuclear technicians (oops) but I digress. I guess he wants the real estate. Doesn’t need it. Wants it.
Hoarders do that.
That feeling of being unwanted is now widely shared. Today she was saying that the market is flooded with project managers. Denver, where I lived for fifty years, is the most expensive non-port market in America.
Before the election, Melissa had just gotten to the point where she could afford to travel again. I can relate. We’ve both had major house repairs and those costs have also skyrocketed. Home repairs have an unfortunate habit of eating up just about everything else you want to do.
She was considering returning to Bhutan or Indonesia. Those plans collapsed.
Being both insightful and thoughtful, she’s worked her way through her options. Initially she chose not to take the early retirement.
Things are different.
In its essence, our conversation today was worthy of sharing.
Melissa had been considering working for a few more years, taking personal time to travel. Financially, it seemed a good decision. After the election, and now with the Sword of Damocles over everyone’s existence and subsistence, the office environment is a depressing dungeon (my word).
She also has been told she has to go back to that office full-time. She’s got an ancient rescue dog at home, and several neurologically-challenged cats. She can’t leave them alone all day without having to have someone there, which is brutally expensive.
For a great many people with highly-specific home situations ranging from disabled or autistic kids to elderly home care or both, RTO is not an option. The cost of that care is impossible. Not only that, the kids and the elderly may suffer.
For those of us single folks with animals, their care is just as important.
Worse, her state of mind, being a fundamentally positive person, will suffer in that office environment.
Today she told me that after much consideration, she’s leaning towards retirement.
She’s 67. Her GSA future isn’t just bleak. It’s a slow trickle down the drain, for all intents and purposes. It’s increasingly hard to for her to get excited about work, which may be true right now for lots of people especially in what’s left of the government.
She said that younger workers with families probably needed their jobs more than she did. That’s classic Melissa.
A great many working seniors who got laid off were working because they had to in order to survive. Different topic addressed by better writers than this author.
At least for now, Melissa has the option.
None of us knows how much time we have left to us. As Melissa slowly slogs her way towards 70, after the breakup of a treasured love affair, she is rethinking her options.
Work in a difficult environment without any kind of guarantee? Come home each night and try to shrug off the miasma of work and find reasons to feel joy?
Or take the time you have right now and live your best life while you can?
Lots of folks don’t have that option. Many have been thrust into an overcrowded job market right at the time inflation is once again taking off, there’s inadequate housing, rents are again skyrocketing and so are interest rates.
Those factors affect all of us, especially those of us on fixed incomes, who are also disabled. We count on that to pay the basics. We also paid into Social Security so that we might not be so terrorized at the end of our lives.
Yesterday I wrote a piece for my paid subscribers which took on a provocative article that argues that we should all kick the bucket at 75. Kindly…NO.
Here’s that article for your perusal.
Some of my favorite people are well past 75, doing excellent work and adding plenty of value. Quite a few are fellow writers on this platform. Their insights are hugely valuable.
So kindly…kick the bucket at 75? NO.
Look. With so many of us working later, often because we have to, at what age are we going to give ourselves permission to do more of what we love instead of more just to survive?
For those of us like Melissa who are closer to the end of their lives than the beginning, or even mid-point, how are we going to spend this time?
If you have options, and there is enough in the bank for you to survive, this is a tough question.
I’m in the middle of making a very big decision myself because of finances, the one factor that will force me to give up my beloved Oregon. In fact, the only factor. I’m having to face this head-on.
The choices are hard. Each one carries a big price tag.
To get something big, you often have to give up something big.
IF, and it’s a big IF, you don’t absolutely have to work, and I do, what are you going to do with the time you have left?
Melissa’s a fighter, but she loves travel. Needs it, just like I do.
It’s part of her value set.
Hunkering down and hoping isn’t.
If we aren’t in integrity with the fundamental values we hold most dear, we suffer. When’s the last time you did a value evaluation of how you’re spending your time?
If you’re not spending enough time doing what you love, you suffer.
Whether you’re a compulsive volunteer, avid gardener, horse rider like me, political activist, doesn’t matter. The older we get, the less time we have to live in congruence with what we hold dear.
During the past week I’ve ridden horses for three days straight. I’ve not been so happy in a very long time.
Travel, horse riding- two of my key values. It’s been a year. I don’t do well when I don’t ride or travel.
I’ll bet you can relate.
What are we doing with our time?
There are too many of you to list, work that I love and respect.
Each one of us here has a lane we inhabit.
The rest of the time, what are we doing to feed our souls? What do we need to help us thrive?
needs her pupper. has discovered transformation through swimming. changes lives through her work but has her dogs, her time on the beach at Florence, Oregon for balance. takes daily long walks with the love of his life and supports writers and causes he cares about.
What are you doing to balance your heart and soul during these times, if these times feel threatening to you? Are you living your values with the time you have?
Melissa’s words early this morning have shoved these questions right in my aging mug. These are quality of life questions for us all.
Melissa has chosen not to hunker down and wait it out. She doesn’t have that kind of time left to her. That’s assuming she can bank on another twenty or so years.
We can’t. None of us can.
That’s the whole point.
What do you need to be free-range again?
Yes, many of us need to work. But we also most desperately need to play.
So let’s play. Please.
Heartfelt thanks to all the mentioned and unmentioned writers whose work I read and whose words are so valuable. Thank you for you. Thank you to all the readers whose comments are so important. If it serves you please consider supporting my work.
Above all, mind your mind. Give it time to relax, laugh, love.
Wow. I can't tell you how much a shout-out from Julia Hubbel means to me. Not only that, but she's clarified my purpose in writing the pieces I do for Medium and Substack -- by pointing out the forest where all I saw were a bunch of trees. Whatever big change is coming up for Julia, may it lead to more genuine joy (and horses). And my heart goes out to her friend Melissa -- it's crucial to see personalized the damage that's being done to excellent public servants, and what we all stand to lose because of it.
Yup, I definitely need my pupper! Starting next month, I'm working toward being able to travel a lot more with her in coming years.